C.M. Samala

Samala is the Co-founder & Managing Director of Jump Canon, a venture firm offering early stage investment to founders of unconventional and underrepresented backgrounds. Samala cut her her teeth as the founder of America’s first national organization to serve Asian Pacific American communities online: 18MillionRising.org. She and her team got Asian Pacific Americans, the country’s fastest growing demographic, excited about politics and launched groundbreaking online vehicles for civic engagement—whether pressuring a company to stop exploitative practices, talking to their parents about racism or homophobia, or getting to the polls. Her work and writing on social innovation, technology and movement-building has been featured at the Obama Adminstration’s White House LGBTQ Technology & Innovation Summit and in Forbes, The New Yorker, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, The Guardian, and Al-Jazeera.

Prior to launching 18MillionRising.org, Samala created START Mobile, one of the earliest digital art distribution networks. The global platform helped more than 500 artists, including Shepard Fairey, Justin Bua, David Choe, and Apex, reach their fans and followers on mobile devices. At peak popularity, START had users in the United States, Central & South America, the Middle East, Eastern Europe, India, China, and Russia. Samala embodies multitudes—a social media expert, Wharton business school grad, and a DJ of renown in the San Francisco Bay Area. Audiences find her message inexorably unique, grounded in her experiences as a serial creator/founder/entrepreneur.